


Silence Laid Steady: Howland House B-Side

by genericghouligan



Series: Demon Shane [2]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Demon Shane Madej, Friendship, Gen, POV Ryan Bergara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 10:45:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16324769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genericghouligan/pseuds/genericghouligan
Summary: Despite what Shane might say, Ryan isn't an idiot.





	Silence Laid Steady: Howland House B-Side

**Author's Note:**

> Several quotes by Shane are variants on the opening narration of The Haunting of Hill House, so where the writing improves, that must be attributed to Ms Shirley Jackson, and not me.

Despite what Shane might say, Ryan isn't an idiot.

He's known Shane was a demon since a few months after they started doing the show together. But he's not just some excitable scaredy cat, or a dumb frat boy, or whatever else people think (and say in the YouTube comments, they do know he can read them, right?).

He's not gonna sell out a friend to the internet just to prove he's right. He doesn't even need to prove he's right. He knows he's right.

Of course, he's been sure he's right - the overarching concept, anyway, even if he's still learning specifics - since the Queen Mary.

Shane's a pretty normal guy, aside from being a demon - a good, decent guy that Ryan enjoys spending time with. Saying that is just not the way their dynamic works.

Actually talking about serious things? They're not great at that, in their own separate ways, so instead they talk about anything and everything and it suits them just fine to bounce off each other with their own deflections, until they're just having fun. It's good, and it works, and it should probably freak Ryan out more that he's got this rapport with a demon. But.

Again, Ryan might be fucking terrified of demons, rightly so, but Shane? Shane is a legitimately chill guy. So once he finished panicking, he realized that yeah, okay, so Shane's a demon, but he's still Shane. Ryan isn't a big energy guy, when it comes to evidence of the paranormal, but he doesn't get any sort of malicious energy from Shane. Mischievous, but never cruel, never evil.

Maybe Shane's the exception. Ryan doesn't know. He's only met one demon.

And he's a pain in the ass and Ryan regularly wants to throttle him, but he's also one of Ryan's best friends and a good person. Demon. Whatever.

"You stole a paper from a college kid, sent it back with corrections, and told HR to hire her?"

"You - don't put it like that," Shane protests.

"I'm just saying, that's weird, and also, mixed signals, I think. Do you hate her or want her hired here?"

"Why would those be mutually exclusive?"

That's a valid point. Ryan grins. "You saw a kid freaking out over her paper, and not only gave her some tips and positive feedback, but got her a resume-padding paid internship!"

"Don't put it like that, either."

"Nope, your options are sweet or creepy, pick one."

"Can't it just be logical? Intelligent local grad student. Interesting paper. A pressing need for more researchers to sneak real journalism and factual information into viral videos. Logic!"

"Sweet or creepy ," Ryan says.

Shane pulls a face, and then gives in with a little sigh-and-shrug. "All right, that's fair, that's the two ways to interpret everything about me: sweetheart or creepy!"

"Creepy," Ryan says immediately.

Jen pauses on her way past. "I only heard part of this but if we're voting on whether Shane is a sweetheart or an altogether unsettling dude, I'm saying sweetheart."

So there's a poll. It gets emailed around. Even the Try Guys get forwarded the link, because they might be filthy traitors and Sims murder victims, but they're also their pals.

The answer comes in, overwhelmingly, "both".

"Unsettling isn't, like, a bad thing," Curly says, "not necessarily. Definitely not in your case. But you're a little intense, you know? It unnerves people. Good unnerves, unless they suck. You're a perfect angel."

It's only Ryan's knowledge of Shane, and how he'll react, that lets him catch the flicker of expression at the term angel, half wry, half annoyed.

"Unsettling can be hot," Kelsey Darragh weighs in. She might be day drunk. "Like, look at Eugene."

There's a ripple of agreement. Eugene, previous polls have established, is both hot and too intimidating.

Shane goes, "Did you just compare me to Eugene?"

"No, no," Ryan starts, as Shane pretends to take a victory lap. "Not -"

"I'm the Eugene of Unsolved, you heard it here first!"

So Shane's still a little bit of a puzzle, is the thing. Still Unsolved, even if Ryan knows what he is.

Because for all the joking Shane does, including wearing nicer clothes and styling his hair for the next few days and striking poses, he's not especially vain. Hell, Ryan is pretty sure he has serious self esteem issues, part of why they get along so well.

Ryan watches him over the top of his phone, an article open to a list of the seven deadly sins in an incognito tab even though that's a pretty normal thing to google, as Shane is showing the research intern around Buzzfeed. HR had taken the you-got-her-hired-it's-your-problem approach to her orientation process.

Pride is out, even if he can be a bit of an ass about the know it all scientific skeptic shit. So is lust. Shane isn't a monk, but he's not exactly lecherous. Envy, he doesn't think Shane is sitting around resenting other people's good fortune - and he's not really wrathful either, is he? Ryan thinks he's got more violent urges than Shane. Greed... He looks up again. Shane is introducing the intern to Jen. If he's a successful content creator a major company, he's not exactly living in some ivory tower, and he's definitely reaching out. Ryan grins a little at Sloth, wishing, not for the first time, this was one of the things they actually talked about, so he could rib Shane for his failure to do crossfit as a demon thing. So many jokes he's had to stifle just because Shane hasn't officially let him in the loop yet and he doesn't want to be a dick.

He counts them over. That's six, seven is - oh. Gluttony. Two airport hot dogs, but Ryan has eaten more hot dogs in a single sitting by a factor of. Actually, he doesn't want to think about that.

Shane is not what Ryan expects from a demon, and not to stereotype, but he expected some demonic qualities out of a demon. But. To be honest, he wouldn't even know if Shane hadn't slipped up one too many times.

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality," says Shane, as they're walking into Howland House.

"Cool it with the poetry, dude."

"Even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream," Shane continues. "And chipmunks are supposed by some to possess souls!"

"Fuck you, they do," Ryan says. He remembers this argument mainly because Shane won't let it go.

Shane shrugs. "Soul is a relative term. I'm just saying, why chipmunks and not trees?"

"I don't know, man, maybe trees do have souls, and it's just they don't move so no one notices any paranormal effects from their presence, but -" Ryan shakes his head. "I don't claim to know everything. Unlike some people, my mind is open."

"Hey, my mind is open! Show me a chipmunk ghost and I will be on it like glue! Like chipmunks on nuts!"

Ryan wheezes.

They fall quiet.

Ryan looks around the house. "This place is going to be scary as shit when the sun goes down."

"This is a nice house, Ryan. I was expecting more Gone With The Wind since we're talking about the Civil War, but -"

"But this is in the town, so it's not a plantation style."

"Houses were nice back then," Shane says. "Reminds me of the Polish dwór. Did I ever tell you about those? Big, uh, big fans of green."

"Save it for Ruining History," Ryan says, because even though they're gonna have to cut this for pacing reasons, TJ and Mark are here, and they hear a lot of Shane's weird history shit. Good thing they were skeptics and might not think of the possibility that Shane had lived through the things he rambled about occasionally.

Shane sighs dramatically. "You gonna tell us any fun historical facts about this house or is it all ghost stories?"

"It's the Civil War, Shane, I wouldn't call it fun."

"Fair point," Shane says. Then, "You ever think about viruses?"

"Not, uh, not casually - what the hell?"

"With your whole... Vitalist 'souls' theory. Or just in general. Like, scientifically, there have to be certain characteristics, right, to qualify as living. And viruses fit a bunch of them, but not all of them. They reproduce, they carry genetic information, they evolve, but they don't have cell membranes. Organisms at the edge of life. Not alive, but not dead, right?"

"Are you asking if I believe in virus ghosts?" Ryan asks, knowing Shane is asking something else, something he can't quite wrap his head around. Something about what he is, and where it fits in Ryan's worldview.

But Shane laughs, anyway, a soft huff of laughter.

"I dunno, man, maybe it doesn't matter what something is," Ryan says. "If it's a person or a chipmunk or a tree or - a virus, or whatever. Maybe it's about intention, and purpose, and connection. Like. Like you can't be a ghost unless there's something tying you somewhere, and it's not about species. It's about, experiences, you know, how you live, how you interact with the world."

Shane lets out a soft little, "Huh."

There's a long quiet between them. Then Shane, unable to let it rest, says, "Howland House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within." He does the last bit in a spooky voice, turning his flashlight on under his chin.

"Jesus Christ, sir."

"It had stood for - how old is this place?"

"I'm not telling you how old it is just so you can butcher Shirley Jackson to my face. We probably can't even air half of this. That's copyrighted material, Shane. Wait. How old is that book?"

"Like thirty years? If you aren't gonna let me quote Gothic novels, the least you could do is tell us some stories abour this place."

So Ryan starts talking about the history, with the deaths during the building of the house, the original owner dying of unknown illness, Maggie Howland dying to a stray bullet, and then the brief use as a Union field hospital once they'd taken the city.

They turn off their flashlights for a solo walkthrough down the hallway where a lot of the activity happened, and Ryan makes Shane go first because fuck that, and maybe the ghosts will be scared off a little and not disturb him as much. As he walks down the hall, Ryan hears him intoning, "Silence lays steadily against the wood and stone of Howland House, and whatever walks there, walks alone."

Nah, he thinks, as Shane switches to calling out to "any ghouls listening" to come shoot him. Things are never silent with them around. And the Ghoul Boys don't walk alone.

Because demon or not, Shane was his friend. He's a weirdo, and may or may not know how to play the piano, and Ryan is pretty sure the Hot Daga is a circle of Hell on its own, but there's no one he'd rather have by his side if a ghost gets rowdy, or if they wind up walking through an old house where nothing happens.

And if he is a little bit evil, somewhere underneath all the flailing limbs and weird hobbies and dorky interests, well. That's the thing about people. People are all a little bit evil. They all exist on that little edge like viruses apparently do: evil and not evil, sins and virtues, creepy and sweet.

He watches Shane play the piano in a haunted house with an unnamed emotion on his face, annoyance and compassion, focus and distraction. Yeah, he thinks. Creepy and sweet. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a direct aversion of the Oblivious Ryan trope. I went what I feel is a more comedic route: Ryan knows but isn't sure if he can broach the subject, and Shane doesn't know he knows, and Ryan doesn't realize Shane doesn't know he knows.


End file.
